Palme and Brandt: the World Perspective

Abstract

Essentially, the conceptual foundations for the Palme Commission Report were laid in the 1960s; and their acceptance then owed a lot to a concurrent and very general downgrading, in the scales of governmental priority, of General and Complete Disarmament (GCD). Granted, the Palme ‘programme of action’ retains the customary averment that GCD must be the ‘ultimate goal’. At the same time, however, it endorses as long-term objectives (meaning, not less than five years hence and, quite possibly, much more), curbs on nuclear arms that, however important they could be, fall far short of this goal. In the light of this and various other considerations, one may presume to infer that most, if not all, of the Commission’s members would at least tacitly acknowledge that, in a world as plagued as ours is by conflicts of attitude and interest, GCD can only be a Utopian mirage. Perhaps, too, they would accept the likelihood that certain forms of military power will find a legitimate part to play in world affairs for centuries or even millennia to come: always assuming, that is, the world survives at all.